


Interlude

by neverthelessthesun



Series: Moxie 'verse [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic Natasha Romanov, Character Study, Domestic Avengers, Established Relationship, F/M, I'm so sorry it's been YEARS, Multi, Natasha-centric, Please tell me if I'm writing her wrong here!, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sequel, Short One Shot, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Author Regrets the Wait, Twister - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverthelessthesun/pseuds/neverthelessthesun
Summary: Sequel to "Altered State".Natasha Alianova Romanova makes it her business to see everything. But this, this is something she hasn't seen before.





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Ohmygosh I'm SO sorry don't hate me
> 
> This has been sitting half-written in my computer since SEPTEMBER and it's MAY. I'm so sorry. I am a terrible updater.
> 
> This fic nothing really changes, either, so like absolutely NO plot points are revealed, I am trash
> 
> God you all deserve better
> 
> Anyway enjoy. Leave a comment telling me how much you need this story resolved and if I get more than one I might finish this series within the next decade!
> 
> PS potential triggers (with spoilers) at the end notes.

Natalia Alianova Romanova was the type of woman who absorbed. She took in the sights and sounds of the bustling city around her, the grinding of the subway beneath her feet and the chatter into bluetooth headsets and StarkPhones and the subtle differences in the color of taxis in the street all held a piece of her attention for a twinkling. With her exhale, she was entranced by the swirls pale white her breath made in the air, and with her inhale, she felt her nose going numb with cold. She loved the fairy lights in the shop window displays and the click, click, click of women’s heels on the cement. Even when she was home, she luxuriated in the feel of her favorite afghan, the whistle her teapot made, the font of text in old printed books. She took in the moment she was in purely for its own sake, and the next the same way. 

Yet, although she did not stop enjoying the world as it came to her, she also lived outside it. She was ready at all times for a fight, a threat, a war. Muscles tensed and eyes scanning the vicinity, she assessed each sense with skill and experience. She could tell you what the businessman passing by had for breakfast, what his job was, whether or not he liked his boss, whether or not he fucked his wife. She could tell you the best nooks and crannies for losing a tail in a crowd, having semi-public sex, spending the night on the street. She could look at a building she had never been in and tell you how to infiltrate it. She knew a thousand ways to kill someone, and half of them she could do without touching them. 

The combination of her macabre skill set and her joy in simple things led her to some odd tendencies. For example, Natasha would clean her knives even when they hadn’t been used because she liked the smell of the cleaning fluid. She often attacked Clint in the halls for no reason other than she enjoyed fighting him. She would ask acquaintances very specific and creepy questions, like if they were enjoying that new golf club set they bought, even though no golf club set had been mentioned or was visible. (Most of her friends were no longer put off by this.)

If pressed, Natasha wouldn’t tell you anything about herself. But if you knew her for some time and caught her on a quiet afternoon after she was done in the shooting range, when she was reading or listening to jazz, and if she was feeling particularly charitable that moment, she might have let slip that she was a bit of a hedonist. She enjoyed what she enjoyed, and she didn’t care about pesky societal norms that got in the way. 

She would tell you without prompting that she was dangerous. 

Natasha was the first person Steve told about Darcy. “She’s my mate. I’m terrified I’ll mess it up, scare her off…” Natasha still believed love was for children, but the good Captain was a child in some ways, and she wanted him to be happy. So she said, “Mates are made to grow with each other. She will match your broken pieces, and I’m sure she’ll have a few of her own. You won’t have it easy, but you will have her, and she will have you, and you’ll get married and make me an auntie to some adorable, crime-fighting kiddies.”

Steve made a face between laughter and fear. Natasha laughed. “Also, I want to meet her.”

“Thor said that was a bad idea…”

But Natasha would find a way. 

Three days into April, Natasha finally met Darcy Lewis. 

“Stark, you don’t scare me!” a strangled yell floated from the communal living room. “JARVIS keeps all your toys on lockdown when you do this, so you’re helpless as a babe!”

Natasha ducked her head into the living room to see Tony, Dr. Banner, and a busty brunette playing twister. Clint was holding the spinner and was definitely rigging the game so both the boys had to put their hands as close as possible to the woman’s butt. She, for her part, was taking turns glaring at Clint and Tony, and shooting suggestive looks at the frankly mollified Bruce. Steve was nowhere to be seen.

“I am not helpless!” Tony howled. “I am trained in hand-to-hand!” Both Natasha and Clint snorted derisively. 

The woman on the Twister mat looked up when Natasha made noise, as best she could with both her feet on a blue circle and one hand each on red and yellow. “Oh, hi! You must be Natasha. I’m Darcy.”

Clint said, “Right hand, green.” even though he hadn’t spun the spinner. Bruce blushed and put his right arm between Darcy’s, almost brushing her chest. Darcy caught his eye and winked.

Tony, who was almost under Darcy, was having a hard time finding a green circle. He finally settled with his elbow pressed into Darcy’s butt. She raised her closest hand to smack him. “Hey!” he growled. 

Natasha sat back and watched them play for a while. Bruce kept trying to excuse himself from playing, but Clint wasn’t having it and Darcy kept asking him to stay in a high, slightly flirty voice. Tony kept trying to feel her up, and for his trouble got a knee in his crotch and narrowly avoided a black eye. Natasha decided she liked Darcy. 

Eventually, JARVIS warned that Steve was on his way up, and the crew quickly cleaned up the game. Darcy draped herself innocently over the couch, like she hadn't just spent the last half hour ignoring Tony’s groping while actively making the man who became the Hulk uncomfortable in close quarters. 

“Here’s my number,” Natasha murmured, handing her Stark Industries card to Darcy. “We should have coffee sometime.”

Darcy looked a little astonished, but after a blink, grinned widely and said, “Thanks. I’d like that.”

Steve entered to see them talking, and went “Oh, hell,” and walked glumly over to them. “I was hoping you two weren’t ever going to meet. You’ll be thick as thieves.”

Darcy’s grin turned smug. “You know it, hon.”

“But now that you have, I guess I have something to ask Natasha.” He glanced at Darcy, as if checking for approval, before turning to Natasha and offering, “Would you come with me, please?”

Natasha followed Steve and was followed by Darcy down to the communal gym. Upon arrival, Steve turned to meet Darcy’s gaze again, then he sighed. “I know you aren’t really…interested in soul marks, but I also know you’ve seen a lot of them. I was wondering if you would take a look at ours, and see—well, if you’ve seen something like it before.”

Nodding, Natasha stepped forward. “Your marks for each other should be solid black,” she advised. 

“Not our marks for each other,” Darcy interjected. “We…have a third.” Natasha’s eyebrows rose. 

Steve lifted his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side, he ran a hand across his left upper arm. There, Darcy’s words stuck out black and loopy, almost a whole paragraph. He raised his other arm, and in the same spot on his right arm, the words pulsed between black and grey every second. 

“With amnesia patients, the marks can change minute to minute, but never so quickly…” Natasha thought aloud. She turned to Darcy. “May I see yours?”

Silently, Darcy raised her shirt as well, displaying Steve’s three words on her ribs, and the flickering “You are my mission” parallel to them. The marks kept time with one another, pulsing black at the same time.

Natasha silently considered the possibilities. “I haven’t seen something like this before,” she finally admitted. “And I make it my business to see everything.” Steve nodded like he was expecting this. Darcy fingered the business card in her jeans pocket. 

“It’s clear that the marks are linked to the same person—your third—but you probably already guessed that. The only other thing I can say is that they are themselves and…not. At the same time.”

Darcy was looking downtrodden, but Steve clasped her shoulder in camaraderie. “Thanks, Natasha, that really does help.” He let her go and his face softened. She braced her spine. “I know these aren’t exactly…your favorite topic. I appreciate it.” 

Sap, she thought. Outwardly she nodded once. Darcy caught her eye and winked, then linked arms with Steve and led him back up to the kitchens, chatting all the way. The paragraph on Steve’s arm made sense.

.o0o.

Natasha wasn’t really interested in soul marks for a reason—she herself didn’t have one. It was one of the reasons she had been a prime candidate for the Red Room from birth. It also meant she got funny looks from the people who knew. It was almost unheard of, to not have a mate. People viewed it like it was a curse—to be incomplete forever.

Natasha took a different approach. She considered herself lucky. After all, the whole “love is for children” thing wasn’t just a front—she actually found the idea of romance boring. It was fine for people who wanted a significant other or found themselves attracted to someone else, but she had never wanted that. Why, if she was aromantic, would she want a soulmate? It was so much more freeing to be able to experience the world as it came to her, to flow and exist as a whole unit, unhindered. 

Anyway. Because of this worldview, Natasha didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the soul marks. 

But after her sequestered meeting with Steve and Darcy, the flickering black marks kept sticking in her head. There was something…wrong about them. 

She kept trying to come up with scenarios where the mark behaving that way would make sense. If the third was sick, or dying, the mark might grow ever so slightly more faint, but slowly, over time. People who had severe memory loss would sometimes cause their soulmate’s mark to flip between two shades of black, and the mates of coma patients knew when the end was near when their mark started fading in and out, but those took minutes or hours to change. 

Some people with DID or neurological disorders sometimes had marks which responded to the person’s mental state. But not so drastically as what she had seen on Darcy and Steve. Not even close.

It was almost like their third was…dying, every moment he was alive. But how was that possible?

_You felt that way, once_ , a voice in her head said. An image of a silver and black chair flashed in her mind. She pushed it away—that way led to flashbacks and dark memories. She didn’t have time to explore it now, here, in the middle of Stark’s Tower. No, she would think about that more, later. For now, she had another mission in Romania to prep for.

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING SPOILERS FOR THE FIC
> 
> One of the characters is an assassin. That means she kills people for a living.
> 
> There is an implication of acephobia and arophobia being culturally accepted. 
> 
> There is a game of Twister that could be implied potentially as a teeny bit dub-con.
> 
> There are mentions of mental illness, severe physical illness, memory loss, coma, death, and implied brainwashing.


End file.
